Tag: Forest Whitaker

Lee Daniel’s The Butler (Wikipedia/IMDB) was another pirated DVD (白宫管家) I recently purchased to watch, though I found that it added to PPStream just a day or two later.

The movie features an ensemble cast with Forest Whitaker (whom I’m still annoyed with from The Experiment [Wikipedia/IMDB]) in the lead role of Cecil Gaines, a black man who learns how to work as a servant for white employers, eventually getting a job in the White House. As the history of political race-relations plays out in the White House over the terms of multiple American presidents (from Eishenhower to Obama), we see how race-relations also estranges Cecil from his son Louis. The father believes in keeping his head down, just thankful for the opportunities he’s had to improve life for himself and his family, while the son chafes at the persistent racial inequality, becoming an activist pushing for change in society, first as a pacifist following Martin Luther King and later momentarily as a militant Black Panther.